Note: This was published 5 minutes before the front page post.
There is a god
The Democratic Leadership Council, the iconic centrist organization of the Clinton years, is out of money and could close its doors as soon as next week, a person familiar with the plans said Monday.
The DLC, a network of Democratic elected officials and policy intellectuals had long been fading from its mid-'90s political relevance, tarred by the left as a symbol of "triangulation" at a moment when there's little appetite for intra-party warfare on the center-right. The group tried -- but has failed -- to remake itself in the summer of 2009, when its founder, Al From, stepped down as president. Its new leader, former Clinton aide Bruce Reed, sought to remake the group as a think tank, and the DLC split from its associated think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute.
Good riddance.
The DLC's goals were:
- To make the Democratic Party more corporate friendly (check).
- Make the Democrats support a more muscular foreign policy (partial check?)
- Support free trade (check)
So it is hard to argue they weren't successful in accomplishing their goals.
Of course, these "accomplishments" were a disaster for both Democrats and the rest of the country. Free trade has led to stagnant wages, the Iraq War (which they supported) was an outright disaster and corporate entanglements have brought the economy to its knees.
I am sure Joe Lieberman and the staff at the New Republic are in mourning.
Consider the final irony: the corporate donors who were the lifeblood of the DLC have left them. Because the bottom line is that nobody can love corporations like Republicans.
It is worth noting their zeal at making the Democratic Party more corporate friendly was never popular. Consider the graph below from a Gallup Poll on February 1st. Americans want less corporate influence, not more. But the DLC was never about winning elections so much as it was about controlling the party.